Friday, February 24, 2012

Kabayaki Sauce

Making your own sushi at home? This is one of those "must have" sauces on hand if you are doing so. (I'm pretty sure you can top just about any piece of sushi off with it.) Kababyaki sauce is also known as eel sauce since it traditionally used to finish off grilled eel dishes, but chicken and pork can always use a subtle addition of sweet and salty flavors to finish off your dish.

The best part of eel sauce is its simplicity. It uses a 1:1:1 proportion of each ingredient and you can reduce the sauce to whatever viscosity you like. I personally like it rather thick, but I have found the flavor wont waver much if you reduce it a lot or just a little.
The reality is the hardest part of this recipe is getting the mirin. Fortunately, this is easy to find at your Asian market or even your local grocery store. Mirin is a sweet cooking wine and when we reduce this high sugar content wine with the other ingredients we get a nice thick sweet and salty sauce.

If you do happen to use the stock to make the recipe more flavorful, be sure to reduce the sauce very well so that the flavors can mingle and so that the sauce can reach the right consistency.

1. Mix all the ingredients together over low heat and let it reduce by half, anywhere from an 30 minutes to an hour.
2. Remove from heat and let it cool then reserve for using on sushi or grilled meats.

I use Wan Ja Shan brand mirin. I've found it to be the best out of what I have tried so far, but I am not an expert when it comes to the stuff. I got around 2 liters of it a few months ago for 9 bucks at the Asian market on Colvin.